Ticketmaster has been fooling music and theatre fans with bogus claims its ‘Platinum’ deals always offer the ‘best available’ seats.

Watchdogs have discovered that people who pay more for the Platinum tickets may end up in seats that are no better than others on general sale.

And in some cases people buying these tickets, which can be ten times more expensive, could get a worse view of the show.

The Advertising Standards Authority said the public was getting little benefit from Ticketmaster's Platinum Service

For many years, the company’s website claimed that Ticketmaster Platinum ‘offers fans the best available tickets for an event direct from the artist’.

It added that the goal of the service was to give fans ‘fair and safe access to the best available tickets, while enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true value’.

However, three people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the claims were misleading and unsubstantiated.

And in a ruling published today, the ASA has ruled Ticketmaster has been misleading customers.

The ASA said consumers were likely to interpret the ‘best available’ claim to mean that those tickets were better than any other available tickets for the event.

In fact, it found evidence to show that General and Platinum tickets were being offered for the same shows ‘with no discernible difference between the two in terms of customer experience’.

The Advertising Standards Authority received complaints from the public that Ticketmaster's claim were misleading

Despite the fact the public were getting little if any benefit from buying Platinum tickets, the ASA said these ‘were likely to be more expensive than the general tickets’.

The ASA said: ‘We therefore considered that whilst the Platinum tickets were among some of the best seats at the venue, they did not offer a tangible benefit compared to some of the general seating tickets and the experience offered by the Platinum tickets was no better than the experience offered by some of the general tickets.

‘We also considered that in the case of some Platinum tickets, the experience offered, when viewed objectively, was worse than the experience offered by some of the general tickets, because they were further from the stage or did not offer as good a view of the stage.

‘Because of that, we concluded that the claim that the Platinum tickets were "the best available tickets" had not been substantiated and was misleading.’

Ticketmaster has changed the wording in its marketing claims to describe Platinum seats as ‘in demand tickets direct from the event organisers’.

The company said the proportion of Platinum tickets for any event was never more than 9 per cent of the total.

However, it admitted that for some events these were ‘the better and best’ tickets, rather than just the ‘best’.

A spokesman said: ‘Platinum is one of the solutions Ticketmaster developed for artists and event organisers to get tickets, which are priced dynamically in some of the most in-demand areas, directly into the hands of fans.

‘We constantly strive to be transparent and clear with the consumer. The wording in question on our website was changed over a year ago.’